What is the paschal fast? What makes it different from any other fast? What does it mean to keep such a fast “sacred”? What sort of fasting is called for? What kind of fasting over two days is capable of creating an “uplifted and welcoming heart”? Why do so many think of Good Friday as a day of fasting and abstinence, exactly like Ash Wednesday?

The fasting of Lent is penitential, an act of repenting of our sin. It begins on Ash Wednesday and it ends during the afternoon of Holy Thursday. There is a turning as we enter the Triduum on Thursday, when we let ourselves focus fully on what means to be at the Vigil. With that, the fasting of Friday and Saturday is not penitential, but anticipatory. It is a fasting that comes from the same part of us that has us fast before momentous events in our lives. Few are hungry on the morning of their wedding day. This is that sort of fast.

Such fasting is not only from food. Even more important may be the fasting from our normal work, the fasting from seeking ways to be entertained, the fasting from chatter, the stilling of our cultural hunger for diversion. Catholics are called to live these days unlike any other of the year — and this is so whatever economic condition we are in, whatever our work, whatever our family situation, whatever our educational background. It is a great leveler, like the Eucharist itself, this paschal fast.